Folk Engineered bicycles
 

My 19-year-old daughter Julia and I visited Folk Engineered Custom Hand Made Bicycles on Thursday. The two owners (and only two workers) of the company graciously showed us around and chatted with us for a long time. I didn't time it, but I think it was over two hours. I would have bought something from them to return the favor, but all they do is build and repair frames. I might like to write a magazine article about them.

We had an incredible time. They work and live in a converted factory building. Well, it's not very converted, to be honest. It's a huge open space with a few walls put up for bedrooms.

Marie and Ryan are married. They're a lovely young couple. They produce steel frames the old fashioned way, using silver soldering or brass brazing. Each one is unique and gorgeous. They're about to build stock models, which seems like a good idea, too.

They are a 5.5 mile bike ride from my house, through all urban streets. I'm excited to have them so close, but I wish there were more I could do for them and more I could use them for.

http://www.folkengineered.com

get a custom bike made?

You just performed a very nice service for them, letting us know about another addition to the custom frame builder line up in the U.S.

If they have products that you feel strongly about, please continue bringing them to our attention.

I checked their site out, and they have some strong design elements.

Bring on the product!

I feel the custom market starting to pick up steam here in the Twin Cities, and it sounds like you are experiencing the same in your area.

Hand made products are so desirable in my opinion, that I am beginning to pay that extra amount for the exact features I covet.

Bye the way, I wish you and your family all the best Tom.

Great site, good humble vibe to the site and product. I like the east coast brick city flavor that's going on. It's a different feel than I get from perusing the hip west coast framebuilding sites. Not that there is anything exactly "wrong" with hip bike manufacturers...

Brick City is Newark's nickname. Were you aware of that?

Maybe Ryan or Marie will weigh in here now. I see one of them just created an account called folk engineered.

It's true that the custom market is building, and not just in bicycles. There's a huge upsurge in artisanal farming, cooking, sewing, etc, too. I guess people are fed up with mass produced, mass marketed stuff. Ryan confirmed this with me, from his perspective. And it so happens that Marie and Ryan worked a farm for a year in New York State's Hudson Valley where chefs go for training and end up staying. Now the Hudson Valley is full of great restaurants, all in the most incredible rural scenery.

I think I ought to take pictures outside and inside their building. It's all gritty but somehow compellingly beautiful. They have tons (literally!) of industrial equipment from various trades. Some of it is merely abandoned, and some they have brought in. Ryan told me the story of one of his giant workbenches. He offered to buy the gorgeous giant vise on it, and the seller threw in the bench that the vise was attached to.

I was looking at their project page and found some interesting things. Tom, do you know why there are bolts in this fork crown? This bike had a lot of other custom touches like a third boss in the downtube... for a C02 cartridge maybe?

http://folkengineered.com/pictures/Shiela3.JPG

This frame seems awfully small for the rider. Not that I know any better, it just looks off to my eyes.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4016/...7eb1822d_o.jpg

I suppose it's more like a mountain bike with drop bars. Maybe that is why it looks odd to me?
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4022/...285d3de2_o.jpg

Or maybe some custom rack? But I don't know. Maybe they'll pipe in here, now that they have a login.

WOW! I'd like a job there! ... like sweeping the floors would OK to start.

"Custom" is the key word. Rivendell puts them on several forks, but I haven't found a production rack to employ them.

In a thread not long ago, I showed an example of a Kogswell with a custom rack made for those fork-crown braze-ons:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4049/...e85ce2525d.jpg

Neal

Neat. Is there a reason for the rack to mount there, other than looking cool?

Tom, I was talking about the third boss in the downtube... maybe that is for C02... or maybe so you can mount a bottle cage in 2 different positions? Not sure.

From looking at it, I would surmise that the rack is more laterally stable using those two fork crown bolts than using the standard center brake hole mount.

ANT bikes also utilize those fork crown mounting points.

Yup, I'd imagine that with four mounting points rather than three (fork crown plus dropout eyelets), you'd get considerably more rigidity.

Neal

The "3rd" water bottle cage.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/79/23...0b3fe3d6_o.jpg

Wait, I thought it had three holes on top but the one closest to the seat tube appears to be a cable guide.

http://folkengineered.com/pictures/Shiela1.JPG

Rack mounts, although I seem to recall Jan Heine of Bicycle Quarterly mentioning that placing the mounts on top of the crown creates a propensity for the bolts to loosen over time.

Did he explain this? I can't imagine it.

He's all into triangulation. If it ain't triangulated, it's no good in his book.

It allows you to install the downtube waterbottle cage "high" or "low"

Oops, I thought you were referring to the first photo. There is another cable guide up top of the down tube, and then a pair of them on the NDS chain stay... is the shifting cable for that hub on the NDS? Drum brake?

Is it just me, or is that BB shell huge?

Heh, should have scrolled further down the page.

Fillet Brazed BB shell. Nice.

I had the opportunity to meet and chat with these folks from Folk Engineered at the Trexlertown Swap Meet. Really nice people.

all i can say is, bring on the production frames, and...
...more importantly...
...the relief map of the Motherland at the top of the seat-tube is beyond hottness!

-rob

ps- i agree that the brown bike is undersized for the rider pictured, and we can tell by the silly length of seatpost visible in the first pic.

Unless it was intended as a 1930's British Retro design in which case the "silly length of seatpost" would be accurate. I was amazed to see a Hercules R racer advertisement stating the only frame size, 20" with a 10.25" BB height, billed as a low and fast frame, it had what seemed to be 12" of seat post with a good 4" drop to the bars.